Learning Conversations

Whatever we might like to think, our corporations are not isolated from the surrounding society. In the developed world the brand names, web sites, and tools shown as examples here are playing a major part in how our society operates, consumes, communicates and learns.

Key trends in society

In the past few years, the following seem have been some of the major trends:

• Internet use, and particularly broadband (2Mb/s or above) has grown phenomenally. In the UK, in 2009, 70% of households had access to the internet.
• Mobile phone use has grown hugely. In 2008, more than 60% of people in the world owned a mobile phone.
• When people use the internet to find out something, they usually start with a search engine rather than any particular information source.
• Knowledge is being democratised. There is now virtually no barrier - apart from your own time - to start publishing, whether its video, audio, text or even real books.
• In a rapidly changing world, any individual or organisation needs to be resilient (able to have alternative ways of doing things), flexible (able to change direction quickly) and maintain good connections (to ensure that you're always up-to-date.

• Organisations are losing control of their message. Your customers (and other interested parties) may be pushing alternative messages. They are on an equal footing to you. Just take a look at the short video below:

Key trends in learning

Alongside the above trends in society, things are also changing in the world of learning and development:

• We're rethinking the established practice of providing training as a panacea for every performance problem.

  "... it's those who consider training as the last resort rather than the first resort who are the engineers of high performance." (Phil Green on this site)

• We're realising the value of "informal learning". In a 2010 report on managers talking about their own learning:

  "the most frequent and effective learning activity is having a chat with a colleague". (How managers learn - in their own words)

• There is now no excuse for learning and development professionals not to keep up with developments and current thinking. We can attend free international online conferences like Learntrends , join in with free webinars such as those provided by the Learning & Skills Group (invitation required - if you need one, drop me a line), and improve our own management capabilities using the Manager Tools podcast and forums.

• There's been a massive growth in authoring tools (see table below for examples). Many are free. And many even allow groups of people to collaborate on a single resource. Some you'll have to install, but some are just websites that you log into.

  Media type	Tool
  Text editing	Google docs, Zoho
  Mini-websites	Wikispaces, PBwiki, Mediawiki
  Quizzes	Hot potatoes, Articulate quizmaker
  Screen capture movies	Captivate, Jing, Camtasia
  Video editing	Jaycut, iMovie, Windows movie maker
  Diagrams	Gliffy, Mindmeister
  Micro-blogging	Twitter, Yammer
  Blogging	Wordpress, Blogger, b2evolution
  Presentation support	Prezi, Google Docs, Zoho
  3D models	Google Sketchup
  Online tutorials	Xerte, Articulate, Lectora, Atlantic Link

  Jane Hart has the best list of tools, both free and paid for, on her Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies site.

So where is L&D heading?

Based on the trends that are happening, I believe that we will see some significant changes in the way Learning & Development operates within our organisations:

• There will be far more use made of low cost, synchronous tools for video-conferencing, instant messaging and web meetings (webinars)
• We will move away from the Learning Management System as a delivery tool (see my reflections (and the comments) on Learning Technologies 2010). We are starting to realise (at last!) that learning cannot be managed.
• Instead the LMS can play a part in supporting evaluation. But we must remember the maxim: Make the important measurable, not the measurable important. This means using the LMS to get more useful feedback from managers about whether performance has improved following an intervention provided by L&D.
• There will be a move towards social learning, in particular user-generated content inside the firewall. A number of companies are already seeing great success in this: BT and Cash America are two excellent examples.
• Workers inside the firewall will be able to use the learning tools they use (such as Twitter and Facebook) outside the firewall.
• Learning will happen across the firewall. Employees will learn from customers and vice versa.
• There will be far more use of simulations and serious games. Tools, like Thinking Worlds will allow "normal" people to create such interventions.
• We will start to make more use of the technology people have in their pockets. Social communication tools like Yammer already integrate with SMS (texts). Augmented reality (where your camera picture is overlaid with extra detail from an application) is starting to be seen in practical training situations. Just being connected to the internet means that you can always have have access to your performance support materials - whereever you are.
• In order to keep up with the rapid changes in society and in your organisations, L&D teams will need to maintain and develop their connections with the business, with research, and with their own personal learning networks.

Increasing Return on Investment

It's the holy grail... The thing every L&D Manager is looking for... How to prove that what they do actually adds value to the business.

Up to now, all we've tended to use as our measure of return is how well our interventions are taken up and perceived - how many people attended, how many viewed every page of the online tutorial, how many thought the trainer communicated well, how many passed an assessment straight after they viewed the training materials.

No-one can legitimately say that these are good measures. They bear no relation to whether an individual has changed their behaviour, or is able to do their job better. They are not measuring performance improvements.

Yet, that is just what L&D should be about - improving performance. The graphic below illustrates quite clearly that this does not just mean courses. In fact, formal learning is just an off-shoot of the ongoing learning processes that are happening in our organisations. L&D have a role in supporting those processes. Just like a gardener cannot make a plant grow, we cannot make someone learn - but we can provide the environment where learning is more likely.

Click on the image for a full-size version

Reproduced by kind permission of GoodPractice.com

So how do we measure that improved performance? Where do we get our information from?

From the managers inside the business. They are the people who are closest to what's going on. They are the ones who should be monitoring performance against business objectives, providing feedback and coaching their teams. L&D need to get close to this group of people and act as performance improvement consultants, not just providers of off-the-shelf chunks of learning that may, or may not, work.

Learning to learn

In parallel to the activity around the managers, we need to help our organisation's employees learn better. It's in their own interests - as they'll get left behind otherwise.

Part of that is to do with the organisation's culture. How far down is responsibility delegated? You can track that by seeing who is allowed to spend money without deferring upwards. The further down it goes, the more likely you are to have a culture of individual responsibility. Which then makes it easier to create a culture of taking responsibility for personal learning.

Of course there are problems when you get some people, but not everyone, taking responsibility for their learning:

• They'll make connections with people outside of your organisation - including across the world.
• They'll end up having more in-depth conversations about their professional practice;
• These conversations are far more likely to take place with people outside of their organisation than inside;
• They will begin to understand that face-to-face events and meetings can be so much more effective if the people involved are part of an existing community of practice (CoP);
• They will gradually give up on "traditional" conferences and training events, knowing that they can get better professional development via their CoPs;

L&D needs to plan for this.

So what are the core skills that we need to develop in our employees to help them learn to learn:

• Using a search engine to find what they need efficiently
• Filtering out the dross, analysing quality and maintaining a trusted network of information sources
• Synthesising information into new knowledge, that can be used in new situations

For more on this, take a look at the video below:

Summary

I've covered a lot in this post. But I'd like you to take away these three points:

1. Make the important measurable, not the measurable important
2. It's about culture not technology
3. Start small, think big, move fast (thanks to Mark Oehlert for that one)